Alamo collection includes oddities

Along with the precious relics of the past, the Alamo collection also includes quite a few bizarre odds and ends, including dolls dressed as Alamo defenders and a coconut from the Battle of San Juan Hill.

Published 3:32 pm, Monday, October 4, 2010

Dolls depicting the heroes of the Alamo are part of the Alamo Collection.

Dolls depicting the heroes of the Alamo are part of the Alamo Collection.

Alamo collection includes oddities

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A coconut from the Battle of San Juan Hill. A Bavarian candy jar. An Apollo 15 moon flag.

Those are things at the Alamo you might never see. The Texas shrine, which began celebrating the 175th anniversary of the war for Texas independence Saturday, has accumulated everything from the precious to the bizarre among its roughly 1,500 artifacts.

Most are listed, with an estimated value, in an inventory with the state comptroller's office. There's "David Crockett's wallet," $400; "Santa Anna's cot and chest," $500.

The collection also includes dolls dressed as Crockett and Jim Bowie that "probably were wonderful in the 1960s, but now look kind of creepy," said Bruce Winders, Alamo historian and curator.

The Alamo and its custodians, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, have had a policy for 10 years on accepting and disposing of items, usually through donation to other museums, returning them to donors or auction sales. But the Alamo has yet to part with anything, Winders said.

The DRT is negotiating with the governor's office over its application for a federal trademark on the phrase "the Alamo," so the group, as a provider of "museum services," can sell branded merchandise to benefit the shrine. One possible use for the funds would be additional museum storage space.

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Policies that the Daughters adopted in 2000 generally narrowed what the Alamo accepts to artifacts from the 1836 battle, or from the era of the site's history as a mission and battleground.

From an antique long rifle donated by the late actor Fess Parker to a Mexican short sword on loan from pop-rock star Phil Collins, the Alamo's Long Barrack exhibit is filled with items that capture the ruggedness of the frontier. There's also the color and beauty of mission-era jewelry crosses on loan from collector Don Jank.

But for decades, collectors, families and veterans of every conflict from the Civil War to War World War I have wanted items kept for posterity at the Alamo, even if they had no historical link to the site.

"People were giving things to the Alamo even before the DRT came" in 1905, Winders said.

That's one reason he can't explain why there's a two-handed Chinese fighting sword at the Alamo.

A 2007 report by the Texas Historical Commission said the Alamo collection lacked a clear "mission and scope," and was being kept in a 2,800-square-foot storage area that needed "immediate improvement."

Winders said the only solution is to build more space for secure storage, including a museum lab and an area for visitors to view requested items. That comes back to a need for funds to house the state-owned Alamo collection and a library collection owned by the DRT, he said.

Some of the DRT's critics have focused attention on two guns donated by the late L.T. Jordan in the late 1960s that disappeared in the 1980s. Winders said he found one of the guns, an 1858 Remington revolver from the Civil War, shortly after he was hired in 1996.

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But Pamela Marshall, a distant cousin of Jordan, said she doesn't expect the other gun, an 1878 Webly revolver, to surface.

"I don't know of anyone in the family who believes it will be found," she said.

News archives reveal that the Alamo had problems with the collection before it hired its first professional curator in 1970.

An item once thought to be the knife Bowie used at the Alamo disappeared in 1945. The San Antonio Express reported in 1953 that the Alamo had "failed to report the theft of the valuable knife." But by then, experts concluded the missing knife was too small to have been Bowie's.

Helen Pellegrin of Laredo sued the DRT in 1966 to force the group to return a rifle, thought to have been Bowie's, that had been on loan by her family since 1936. Pellegrin's sister-in-law also claimed ownership of the rifle, so the Daughters sought a legal opinion. The 4th Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Pellegrin, who died in 2008.

The Alamo collection is good hands today, Winders said. The Alamo, which charges no admission, hired a designer and museum specialists, and ordered display cases from Germany, in 2005 to create a "professional and modern look" in the Long Barrack, he said. Winders hopes to add similar displays in the chapel and sales museum.

"We still have a way to go, but most people who come back to the Alamo comment on the progress they notice, not the problems," he said.